On 25th May, arguably the world’s most famous motorsport race returned to the Brickyard for its 109th edition.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Monaco Grand Prix may contest that claim, but all three form motorsport’s unofficial ‘Triple Crown’.
The answer to which event reigns supreme comes down to personal opinion, but there will be a unanimous response if you ask the 33 drivers who lined up at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), as well as the sellout crowd of 350,000 fans which saw a rare lift of the traditional TV blackout in local areas.
The Indianapolis 500 is the largest single-day sporting event in the world and boasts the tantalising prospect of anyone from the front row to the back of the grid having a shot at winning.
While the 11th and final row has never produced an Indy 500 winner, this year saw back-to-back reigning victor Josef Newgarden start alongside his Team Penske stablemate Will Power in the final two positions after they were found to have driven illegally modified cars in qualifying. The former even found himself with an outside chance at the win before a fuel pump issue extinguished any hopes of a historic result.
The Indy 500 provides a stage where the impossible becomes achievable – just ask rookie Robert Shwartzman, who inexplicably found himself on pole with new IndyCar team Prema Racing. This was the first-ever oval race for both Shwartzman and Prema.
This is what makes the race so captivating for fans and, notably, this is the first sellout crowd since 2016. But IndyCar is not just the Indy 500. With a new TV deal in place for 2025, the series’ priority is to use its biggest strength to overcome its most significant weakness.
Pato O’Ward led Josef Newgarden by less than a car length as the white flag was waved for the final lap, but it was the latter who would prove victorious at the 2024 Indy 500 (Image credit: Penske Entertainment)
A new frontier with Fox
IndyCar enjoyed a broadcast relationship with NBC for nearly two decades but switched to Fox at the start of this season in a deal reportedly worth US$25 million per year.
The key aspect of this new arrangement is the broadcast strategy. All of IndyCar’s 2025 races will air on the main Fox channel which means, including qualifying for the Indy 500, there are 19 windows of coverage on the network’s flagship channel.
As a result, IndyCar is now the only motorsport series whose races are aired exclusively on broadcast television in the US.
This is providing unprecedented visibility for the series and Fox has shown it is prepared to throw marketing weight behind IndyCar – something NBC was accused of falling short on throughout its TV deal.
The more proactive approach from Fox saw the creation of three advertisements centred around star drivers Newgarden, Pato O’Ward and reigning IndyCar champion Álex Palou. Fox aired them during its coverage of the 2025 Super Bowl, which is typically the most-watched TV programme of the year in the US.
While marketing poster boy Newgarden’s controversy during Indy 500 qualifying is an unforeseen complication, it underscores IndyCar’s most significant stumbling block.
The problem with the Indy 500
For many Americans, the Indy 500 is the only touchpoint they have with the IndyCar Series – a situation that is even more pronounced for fans around the world. Converting these casual viewers into dedicated followers of the wider championship remains arguably IndyCar’s biggest challenge.
The Indy 500 being far more popular than IndyCar itself is not a new problem, yet it remains unresolved.
“It is a difficult reality that the [Indy 500] is far bigger than the entire series, and the Indy 500 winner is regarded more highly than the annual series champion,” explains Austin Schneider, director of business development at sports marketing and creative agency Sport Dimensions.
“I think it highlights the exceptional promotion of the Indy 500 and maybe the lacklustre promotion of every other event.
“IndyCar’s schedule [makes it] difficult to carry momentum, particularly at the beginning of the season with three-to-four-week gaps between events. Our hope is that they can tighten that up and extend the successful strategy of the Indy 500 to the other events.
“We believe the series has an amazing product with great racing and top-tier fan access. It’s just an equation of viewer interest.”
However, the disqualifications of Newgarden and Power are a particularly prominent issue since Team Penske is owned by Roger Penske, who also owns IndyCar and IMS.
This is not the first controversy involving Team Penske after the push-to-pass scandal that dominated the start of last season. Arrow McLaren’s O’Ward, who narrowly missed out on his first Indy 500 win to Newgarden last year, has this week alleged further infractions by Team Penske that were not publicly reported.
It has also emerged that the modified part Team Penske was penalised for has been used on the team’s car for well over a year. While there is no suggestion the team has gained a performance advantage, this development casts an unwelcome shadow over the series’ governance.
Roger Penske has shown he is acutely aware of this delicate balance. Just four days before the Indy 500, he dismissed long-serving team president Tim Cindric, managing director Ron Ruzewski and general manager Kyle Moyer from Team Penske.
“Nothing is more important than the integrity of our sport and our race teams,” said Penske said. “We have had organisational failures during the last two years, and we had to make necessary changes. I apologise to our fans, our partners and our organisation for letting them down.”
Tim Cindric joined Team Penske in 1999 before being appointed president in 2006 (Image credit: Penske Entertainment)
“Overall sentiment is immensely positive”
Capturing viewer interest is difficult enough in today’s television landscape where attention spans are increasingly scattered – let alone when the credibility of a motorsport series is being called into question.
Yet the Indy 500 is a rare example of a motorsport event that has not suffered a major drop in viewers since the turn of the century.
In 2001, Nascar’s Daytona 500 averaged 17.08 million viewers compared to the Indy 500’s audience of 8.58 million. Last season, Nascar averaged 5.95 million viewers, just ahead of the 5.34 million that watched the Indy 500.
This suggests the Indy 500 is far less vulnerable to shifts in American viewing habits. Now, it has fallen to new broadcast partner Fox to capitalise on this strong viewer retention. Fox smashed all expectations with an average viewership of 7.05 million, the most-watched edition of the Indy 500 since 2008 and only the second time this century that the race has drawn more viewers than the Daytona 500.
This underlines Schneider’s point that “overall sentiment is immensely positive for the series” at the start of this new deal. IndyCar’s year-to-date (YTD) average audience is up 25 per cent on 2024 after the Indy 500.
Last season, though, was a particularly disappointing year for IndyCar viewership and, prior to the Indy 500’s exceptional result, the average audience had not yet bounced back to the levels seen in 2023 or 2022, as shown in the graph below. But Fox should be hugely encouraged that, thanks to the Indy 500, this is now IndyCar’s best start to a season since at least 2016.
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Creating an impactful solution
Fox has started on the right track, but more investment and collaboration are clearly required. To its credit, the wheels are already beginning to turn.
It began with an activation that Schneider’s agency worked on, where Newgarden and Nascar champion Joey Logano appeared together during the pregame buildup for the Super Bowl. Nascar remains the biggest motorsport series in the US, so this type of cross-promotion is crucial for IndyCar.
IndyCar and Fox have also been proactive by changing the start times of the five races that follow this year’s Indy 500 to avoid clashes with Nascar and hopefully boost overall viewership.
Although this won’t take effect until IndyCar’s visit to Gateway in three weeks, which feels like a missed opportunity to maintain momentum after the Indy 500.
Until IndyCar creates a schedule that shortens gaps between races and features more tentpole events – like the race debuting at Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium next season – then Fox can only do so much to help promote the series.
Does IndyCar need fresh leadership to encourage a new direction? The last notable figure to publicly suggest that was Michael Andretti, who subsequently stepped back from the day-to-day running of his eponymous organisation.
Without Penske, IndyCar wouldn’t exist today, as the series would not have survived the pandemic. But IndyCar could benefit from a different approach. Perhaps new president J Douglas Boles, who has overseen more than US$150 million in strategic investment into IMS, is the steady hand the series needs.
Until a clear plan is finalised, IndyCar will continue to fall short of its potential. But all eyes will still be on ‘The Greatest Spectacle in Racing’.
For one weekend, IndyCar will be the biggest motorsport series in the world.
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